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    300 years
    Return to "Cook & Wedderburn" is linked to these Works 6 items
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    Arpinum

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    Arpinum
    Arpinum
    Arpinum
    Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
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    Artist
    Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
    Title
    Arpinum
    Date
    c.1769? (undated)
    Medium
    Black and white chalk on pale brown paper
    Dimensions
    Metric: 291 x 408 mm
    Imperial: 11 7/16 x 16 1/16 in.
    Collection
    Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    WA.RS.REF.118
    Wilson Online Reference
    D178
    Description
    A river with a boat on it runs through the foreground, turning away at the left. From the right a tributary leads in, crossed by a bridge and flowing into a low weir at the centre middle distance. On the right bank stands a group of tall trees and across the river on the left are wooded hills with a mountain rising behind. In the centre foreground is a group of three figures, one seated and another gesticulating towards the boat.
    Provenance
    Paul Sandby; John Ruskin; Ruskin Collection, Reference Series 118
    Signature/inscription
    Faintly inscribed right lower corner, perhaps by Paul Sandby: Arpinum
    Techniques and materials
    There may be touches of sepia wash in places
    Collectors' marks
    [1] Lower left corner: Paul Sandby (Lugt 2112)
    Subject
    The Volscian hill town of Arpinum lies in the province of Frosinone, 70 miles south-east of Rome. It was quite possibly visited by Wilson on his way from Rome to Naples. Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on 3 January 106 BC at the family home just outside Arpinum.
    Related Drawings
    D371 Study for 'Cicero and his Friends', Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
    Related Paintings
    P162 Cicero and his two Friends, Atticus and Quintus, at his Villa at Arpinum, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
    P162A Cicero with his Friend Atticus and Brother Quintus at his Villa at Arpinum, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
    P162B Cicero, Atticus and Quintus at his Villa at Arpinum, Private Collection, London
    Critical commentary
    This drawing may be linked with Wilson's paintings of Cicero and his friends at Arpinum (see 'Related Paintings'). However the inscribed identification of the location may be a later one, perhaps even by Sandby.
    John Ruskin, who owned the drawing and gave it to the University of Oxford, wrote of it: ' Sketch by Richard Wilson, in English [sic] lowlands, given to show the state of landscape art just before Turner broke into it with a new light. Wilson is a thoroughly great painter, and this drawing is not to cast contempt upon him, but upon the kind of teaching which landscapists received in the eighteenth century. Nor is the sketch given as faultful in manner; on the contrary, it is wholly exemplary in manner: it is only faultful in representation of fact, not one of the lines here pretending to represent trees rendering truly any one fact of stem or foliage, but only recording for the painter the position of masses which had interested him, and out of which he felt himself able to compose an impressive picture. [ ... ] It is entirely artistic, and, in the eighteenth-century import of the word, gentlemanly in the highest degree, and this quality is one rarely to be obtained in the nineteenth century. [Cook & Wedderburn, Vol. 21, The Ruskin Art Collection - Rudimentary Series, 1878, p. 288, no. 276]
    Previous Cat/Ref Nos
    1903
    Bibliography
    Cook & Wedderburn, vol. 21, pp. 38 & 288; Solkin 1978, pp. 409-10, pl. 25b; Brown 1982, pp. 666-67, no. 1903
    Link to WG Constable Archive Record
    WGC/1/1/29
    Condition/Conservation
    The sheet is torn and repaired at the lower left corner and at the centre of the left margin.
    Updated by Compiler
    2019-11-01 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), Study for 'Cicero and his Friends', Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

    Paintings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), Cicero and his two Friends, Atticus and Quintus, at his Villa at Arpinum, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), Cicero with his Friend Atticus and Brother Quintus at his Villa at Arpinum, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), Cicero, Atticus and Quintus at his Villa at Arpinum, Private Collection, London

    Biographies

    • Paul Sandby (c.1730-1809)
    • John Ruskin (1819-1900)

    Documents

    • David Solkin, 'Some New Light on the Drawings of Richard Wilson'
    • Edward Tyas Cook & John Wedderburn, The Works of John Ruskin Library Edition
    • David Blayney Brown, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Volume IV: The Earlier British Drawings, British Artists and Foreigners working in Britain born before c.1775
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